Stephen King, in his nonfiction book Danse Macabre, identified three distinct types of fear that horror can evoke:
- Terror - the finest emotion
- Horror - one step down
- Gross-out - the fallback when all else fails
This isn’t a value judgment about quality. It’s a recognition that different types of fear work on different psychological levels and serve different purposes.
Understanding this hierarchy-and when to deploy each-separates effective horror from cheap scares.
The Three Levels
Terror: The Fear of Anticipation
What it is: The dread of what might happen. The unknown. The door slowly opening. The shadow moving in the periphery.
Where it lives: In your imagination.
Why it’s powerful: Your brain fills in the gaps with whatever personally terrifies you. The writer provides suggestion; your mind provides the nightmare.
King’s quote:
“Terror is the finest emotion, and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find I cannot terrify him/her, I will try to horrify; and if I find I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud.”
Examples:
The Blair Witch Project: You never see the witch. You see the characters’ increasing panic, strange sounds in the night, stick figures hanging from trees. The terror comes from not knowing what’s hunting them.
Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House: The house is “not sane.” Strange sounds, cold spots, doors that close on their own. The terror is in the wrongness you can’t quite define.
King’s Pet Sematary: The dread of what Church the cat has become after resurrection. Before Gage dies, before the real horror, there’s the terrible knowledge that something is wrong with resurrection, and the growing certainty of what Louis will do.
Horror: The Fear of Revelation
What it is: The moment of seeing the terrible thing. The monster revealed. The true nature of the threat made visible.
Where it lives: In the specific detail of the frightening thing.
Why it’s powerful: It validates and exceeds the terror that preceded it. The release of tension combined with the shock of revelation.
Examples:
The chestburster scene in Alien: The terror was the crew not knowing what was wrong with Kane. The horror is the creature exploding from his chest. Specific, visceral, undeniable.
King’s IT: The terror is sensing something evil in Derry, the balloons, the voices from drains. The horror is seeing Pennywise in all his monstrous forms-the deadlights, the spider, the true nature of It.
The ending of The Mist (film): The terror is not knowing what’s in the mist. The horror is seeing the monsters-specific, grotesque, incomprehensible. The true horror is the ending’s revelation (no spoilers).
Gross-Out: The Fear of Revulsion
What it is: Physical disgust. Gore, body horror, viscera, decay, violation of the body.
Where it lives: In your gag reflex.
Why it works: It triggers a primal response-the same disgust that kept our ancestors from eating rotten food or touching diseased corpses. It’s survival instinct weaponized.
Examples:
Exploding head in Scanners: Pure gross-out. No psychological terror, just visceral shock.
The torture scenes in Saw franchise: Designed to make you squirm. The fear is of physical mutilation and pain.
King’s Gerald’s Game: Jessie’s escape from the handcuffs. I won’t spoil it, but if you’ve read it, you know. Pure gross-out, and effective.
The Hierarchy: Why Terror Ranks Highest
King places terror above the others not because gore is bad, but because:
1. Terror engages imagination
The reader/viewer becomes an active participant. Their personal fears amplify the terror beyond what the writer alone could create.
2. Terror sustains
You can maintain dread for long stretches. Gross-out and horror are moment-specific-they spike and then diminish.
3. Terror is personal
What terrifies you might not terrify someone else. The ambiguity allows each person to find their own worst fear in the shadows.
4. Terror ages better
Specific special effects date. Unexplained dread does not. The Haunting of Hill House (1959) is still terrifying because Jackson never shows you the ghost.
How to Create Each Type
Crafting Terror
Technique 1: Delay the reveal
The longer you withhold the threat’s true nature, the longer terror lasts.
In Jaws: Spielberg keeps the shark mostly hidden for the first half. Mechanical problems forced this choice, but it made the movie scarier-the terror of what’s beneath the water.
Technique 2: Violate normalcy
Show something wrong in a familiar context.
The children’s playground stood empty at noon. That wasn’t strange. What was strange was that all the swings were moving-in perfect unison, in the same direction-and there was no wind.
Technique 3: Create inevitability
The protagonist knows something bad is coming but can’t stop it.
In Final Destination: The terror isn’t the death scenes-it’s knowing death is coming and being unable to prevent it.
Technique 4: Use silence and stillness
Nothing is happening. But it should be.
The forest went silent. Not gradually-all at once, like someone had hit a switch. Even the insects stopped. Marco stood very still, listening to the nothing.
Crafting Horror
Technique 1: Specific, concrete detail
Don’t say “the monster was terrifying.” Describe it in detail that makes the reader see it.
H.P. Lovecraft’s approach: Though often criticized for “indescribable” horrors, Lovecraft’s best moments are specific: the color of Cthulhu’s skin, the geometry of non-Euclidean architecture.
Technique 2: The reveal should exceed the dread
The horror must be worth the buildup of terror.
Bad reveal:
Marco turned. Standing there was… a slightly scary man.
Good reveal:
Marco turned. The thing standing there had the shape of a man but the wrongness of a reflection in a fun-house mirror-limbs too long, joints bending in extra places, a face that was a face only in the sense that it was where a face should be.
Technique 3: Make it personal to the character
The horror should violate something the character values or fears.
In The Fly: Brundle’s transformation is horrific not just because it’s gross, but because it’s the destruction of his brilliant mind and humanity.
Crafting Gross-Out
Technique 1: Sensory detail
Don’t just say it’s disgusting-make the reader feel it.
The smell hit first-sweet rot and copper. Then he saw the wound, edges ragged and glistening, something moving in there that definitely wasn’t supposed to-
Technique 2: Violate the body
Body horror works because we’re all trapped in bodies and afraid of them betraying us.
- Parasites
- Mutation
- Decay
- Involuntary transformation
- Loss of bodily autonomy
Technique 3: Subvert care
The most effective gross-out violates spaces or contexts associated with care and safety.
- Medical procedures gone wrong
- Food that’s contaminated
- Home invasion of the body
In The Thing: The defibrillation scene-a medical procedure meant to save life becomes the revelation of something horrific.
Combining the Three: The Horror Escalation
The most effective horror uses all three in sequence:
Phase 1: Establish Normalcy
Show the world before the horror. Make it real and relatable.
Phase 2: Introduce Wrongness (Terror)
Something is off. We don’t know what yet.
Phase 3: Escalate the Dread (More Terror)
The wrongness grows. The threat is coming closer.
Phase 4: The Reveal (Horror)
Show the monster, the ghost, the truth.
Phase 5: The Confrontation (Horror + Gross-out)
The protagonist faces the threat. This is where visceral details heighten the stakes.
Phase 6: The Aftermath (Lingering Terror)
Even if the threat is defeated, the world isn’t quite right again. The terror that it could return.
Example: Alien
- Normal: The Nostromo crew wakes from hypersleep
- Terror: The distress signal, the derelict ship, the eggs
- Escalating terror: Something attached to Kane’s face
- Horror: The chestburster
- Horror + gross-out: The hunt through the ship, deaths, the creature revealed
- Lingering terror: Ripley in hypersleep, knowing the threat exists
Genre-Specific Considerations
Supernatural Horror
- Terror: unexplained phenomena
- Horror: revealing the ghost/demon/entity
- Gross-out: possessions, exorcism details, physical manifestations
Slasher Horror
- Terror: the killer stalking
- Horror: the reveal of the mask/weapon/method
- Gross-out: the kills themselves
Body Horror
- Terror: something is wrong with my body
- Horror: seeing the transformation/infection
- Gross-out: the visceral details of bodily violation
Psychological Horror
- Terror: questioning reality, paranoia
- Horror: the revelation of truth (often worse than imagined)
- Gross-out: often minimal or absent
Cosmic Horror
- Terror: humans are insignificant, the universe is indifferent
- Horror: glimpsing the incomprehensible entities
- Gross-out: the physical impossibility of their existence
When to Use Which Fear
Use Terror when:
- You want sustained dread
- The reader’s imagination will create something scarier than you could describe
- You’re building to a revelation
- You want psychological depth
Use Horror when:
- You need a moment of intensity
- The reveal is the payoff for sustained terror
- You want to show the threat’s true nature
- You’re delivering on a promise
Use Gross-out when:
- You want a visceral reaction
- The body is the threat or the target
- You need to shock the reader into heightened alertness
- You’re writing for an audience that wants that experience
The Balance
Too much terror without payoff: The reader feels strung along. Lost syndrome-constant mystery with no answers.
Too much horror without buildup: Jump scares without context. Startling but not scary.
Too much gross-out: Desensitization. The reader goes numb or disengages. Torture porn problem.
The ideal ratio (King’s practice):
- 60% terror (sustained dread)
- 30% horror (key reveals)
- 10% gross-out (punctuation moments)
What Doesn’t Work
Gross-out without purpose
Gore for its own sake feels gratuitous. Even extreme horror should serve character or theme.
Horror without terror
Showing the monster immediately removes the dread. (Unless your story is about living with the known monster.)
Terror that never delivers
The audience needs payoff. Implied horror only works if the implication is satisfying.
The Practical Exercise
Take a horror scene you’re working on and identify:
- Where is the terror? What is unknown or dreaded?
- Where is the horror? What is revealed or seen?
- Where is the gross-out? What physical reaction are you creating?
Then ask:
- Am I using the right type of fear for this moment?
- Am I building from terror to horror to gross-out, or am I jumping straight to the end?
- What am I leaving to imagination, and what am I showing?
The Philosophy
King’s hierarchy isn’t about “high art vs. low art.” It’s about what creates lasting fear versus momentary fear.
Terror lingers. You lie awake thinking about it. It colonizes your imagination.
Horror shocks. You remember the moment, the image, the reveal.
Gross-out jolts. You physically react, then move on.
All three have their place. Great horror knows which to use when.
Master terror, deploy horror strategically, and use gross-out sparingly.
That’s the formula for fear that endures.
Next in the series: Romance’s Emotional Beats - The meet-cute to HEA structure and the mandatory emotional moments of romance fiction.